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Champlain Featured In The Atlantic As An Ideal College

October 22, 2013
| by Kayla Hedman ’14 / Champlain College News

Champlain College is proud to share that The Atlantic magazine has featured the College as a model for what an ideal college would look like. Writer and higher education expert John Tierney highlighted Champlain College as an institute of higher education that meets and exceeds expectations. The article is part or the larger "American Futures" project, a series of articles in which writers James and Deborah Fallows examine small, resilient American cities that are home to intriguing innovations and entrepreneurship.

The online series, being produced in conjunction with National Public Radio's Marketplace program, is highlighting innovative small cities like Burlington, which is home to many innovative companies and organizations. The Fallows have recently published pieces on Dealer.com, Seven Days newspaper, Burlington International Airport, Vermont Refugee Resettlement, the Sustainability Academy, and the Alchemist Brewery. The University of Vermont and St. Michael's College were featured in a previous article, and Champlain's story was published on Oct. 21.

In mid-September Champlain welcomed Tierney, a retired professor of American government at Boston College, to its campus to interview administrators, faculty, staff and students and find out what makes Champlain unique.

In his article, Tierney presents his vision of an ideal college to look something like the following: a place where "students would acquire training that makes them immediately employable. They'd take courses in the liberal arts that would sharpen their skills in writing, analysis, and reasoning. And they'd graduate with some real-life knowledge, such as how to interview for a job. There'd be no tenure for faculty, but instructors would be made to feel they're valued members of the enterprise. And administrators would constantly ask themselves ‘how can we prepare students for what the world needs of them?'" He writes how Champlain meets every aspect of this ideal vision and, in the process, is gaining the attention of the higher-ed world.

Tierney quotes President David Finney's perspective on the College's unusual DNA - an intensely personal place where career-driven students are persistent in their studies, gaining employment experience, professional networking, serving their community, and learning real-world skills.

Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 382 Colleges: 2018 Edition. For the third year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2018 "America's Best Colleges," and an "A+ School for B Students" and is ranked in the top 100 Regional Universities of the North. Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2018 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2018 College of Distinction. For more information, visit www.champlain.edu.